The next three days were spent working on freeing the dragon. I did wonder if it was possible to use general shaping to make chains ‘solid’ and use that to cut them in half, thus using alteration essence and not manifestation essence. However, since the entire point of giving Anise most of the credit for freeing the dragon was to hopefully upgrade her manifestation essence affinity, so it w...
2023-08-19 05:39:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe next five hours were a mind-numbing blur of repetition. Anise’s freezing spell was rather slow, and she took a small break after each cast to think about ways to optimize the spell, given her limited manifestation reserves and the large quantity of chains we needed to deal with. Her ‘freeze the Prismium chain’ spell went through a few different iterations, but the general course of ac...
2023-08-18 05:40:21 +0000 UTC View PostA few things:
1. I’ve signed a publishing deal for Budding Scientist with Podium. I believe I mentioned in, like… February? March? Something like that? that I was working on something, and well, that was the edits for the next draft of the Volume 1 of Budding Scientist. I felt that it was important not to change it TOO much, but there were a bunch of smaller things that I felt should ...
2023-08-17 05:37:47 +0000 UTC View Post“Orthanoids?” asked the dragon, in heavily accented old Orthan. Its voice was gravelly, and sounded kind of like boulders slowly being ground against each other. I wondered how its body produce the sounds.
I also noticed that it spoke Orthanoid, and quite fluently. The pronunciation the dragon used for several syllables was very different from the modern pronunciation of the Orthanoid...
2023-08-17 05:25:14 +0000 UTC View PostAlice quickly dealt with her level-up notifications before she went to sleep.
You have leveled up!
Survivor: 56 -> 58, Kinetic Manabinder 41 -> 42
Both her [Kinetic Manabinder] and [Survivor] Class seeds got clogged up after her level up notifications, meaning that if Alice wanted to level up again, she needed to unclog her [...
2023-08-12 07:13:36 +0000 UTC View Post“Are you completely sure that it’s somewhere in this building?” asked Felix, after a few moments.
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Then let’s look for it. If we can break off the connection between the two dimensions, this world can survive. And we’ll be rolling in Achievement afterwards,” said Felix..
At Felix’s words, Anise paused for a moment. She looked nervous, ...
2023-08-12 04:27:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe four of us felt very excited when we found a door that hadn’t been turned into melted slag. We had spent most of our time in this building finding empty room after empty room, so the idea that there might actually be something to take in the next room was exciting.
But we also didn’t get sloppy. We carefully investigated the area, looking for traps, and I used my soul-vision to in...
2023-08-11 06:11:00 +0000 UTC View PostAfter we exited the building, we took a few moments to rest. The fight against the strange void creatures from room six hadn’t been the most dangerous fight we had ever been in: in fact, the hostile creatures hadn’t even had a chance to attack before Felix killed them all. However, fighting creatures that couldn’t be hurt by physical attacks and were extremely hard to track had still put ...
2023-08-10 04:15:59 +0000 UTC View PostAlice felt her heart leap into her throat for a moment, before she started to calm down.
She still felt a little afraid because the manor was under attack, but her training started to kick in. Ethan had explicitly taken her with him when the Illvarian army had taken down the Society base several months ago, in order to train her awareness of battlefields and fighting. He had also consiste...
2023-08-05 07:55:37 +0000 UTC View PostThe fifth room was creepy.
Not in the same way I imagined the dimension of the black sun was, where, according to the research notes we had found, everything was alive in some fashion. Instead, it was like we had walked into a furnace.
Every single sub-chamber of the fifth room was filled with light and heat. Unlike the other four chambers, the chambers in room five didn’...
2023-08-05 05:15:35 +0000 UTC View PostA few minutes later, the five of us arrived at the fourth major room. I had to admit, Sallia lugging around Sekundyrr as we walked through the hallways of the facility was a rather absurd sight. However, Sekundyrr seemed incredibly excited to move around a little bit, even if he could only do so while being carried around like a sack of potatoes by Sallia.
The fourth room reminded me of t...
2023-08-04 07:56:03 +0000 UTC View PostThank you, sent the creature. Its previous terror was starting to fade, and it no longer seemed like it would pass out from fear.
I babbled a few ‘friendly/peaceful’ thoughts at it as Sallia retreated back out of the room. Meanwhile, the creature wobbled out of its restraints… and then promptly collapsed onto the floor.
Name is Sekundyrr. Many thanks for freeing m...
2023-08-03 07:26:46 +0000 UTC View PostNeither Alice nor Ethan said much on the way back to Ethan’s manor. The [Guards] also remained fairly silent, simply leaving Alice to stew in her thoughts.
Now that she wasn’t worrying about her new Perk, or the disappearance of the System, Alice spent a few moments thinking about the woman she had failed to save earlier.
Alice sighed, and for a moment, she almost wished for the...
2023-07-29 07:53:16 +0000 UTC View PostIn the middle of the first dimensional sub-chamber, a massive creature was chained to a table.
The thing had mouth, or any discernible head. It looked like somebody had chopped a fish in half, taken the lower part of the fish, and then grafted it to the top half of a plant. The plant half of the creature strongly resembled a stickman, except that instead of sticks, its upper body was made...
2023-07-29 04:17:20 +0000 UTC View PostAfter investigating the gravity chamber for a while longer, I couldn’t come up with an idea for how it actually worked. Despite the massive ambitions I had started to harbor for the final direction of alteration magic, there was something I was missing about how to use alteration magic to alter the laws of reality.
The chamber itself was also difficult to figure out.
Even though I...
2023-07-28 06:25:17 +0000 UTC View PostMy first impression of the building was that the interior was bland. There was a giant desk in front, littered with papers that had long since started crumbling to dust. The decorations in the room were minimal, and the only furniture pieces were a few rotten chairs scattered around the room. It was a surprisingly spartan and simple interior.
Luckily, even though the room had almost nothi...
2023-07-27 04:11:19 +0000 UTC View PostAuthor's Note: This is a Markets and Multiverses chapter. I posted the chapters for each of my stories in reverse order today, so if you're only a Budding Scientist reader, check the other post I made today.
The four of us continued walking, making our way around more and more small scorched patches of land as we continued to walk. However, we remained wary every single s...
2023-07-22 06:13:44 +0000 UTC View PostNote: This is a budding scientist chapter, not an MaM chapter. I’m posting them in a weird order today because that’s the order I feel like editing my stories in. MaM chapter later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Alice did her best to focus on her System messages. After all, she didn’t want to focus on the corpse of the woman who she had failed to treat, and Alice was also slightly ...
2023-07-22 03:27:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe ruined palace and its outskirts grew closer by the hour as we continued traveling. It took two more hours for me to be able to make out the finer details of the buildings in the distance, and also helped me understand just how massive the building we were heading towards truly was. The ruined palace still had spires and walls that stretched towards the sky like fingers of steel clawing towa...
2023-07-21 05:54:55 +0000 UTC View PostAfter we had our talk with Anise, the three of us continued traveling.
Now that the surface seemed depopulated, we ran into fewer monsters than ever before. The black sun posed the biggest problem for our travels: we had to spend every other day resting. While I was immune to the effects of the black sun, due to the {Emptiness} skill I had picked up from {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}, and...
2023-07-20 04:43:17 +0000 UTC View PostAlice felt her knuckles tighten into fists, before she forced herself to unclench her hands. Then, she laid a finger on the dying man’s stomach. As she did, she tried her best to think of the man as a patient, rather than a real, living person.
Alice felt something prod at her emotions, and then clamp down on them like a steel vice. It took her a moment to realize what was happening. Et...
2023-07-15 08:15:47 +0000 UTC View Post“Well, Anise, I should probably start with the afterlife,” I said, as I sat down and motioned for her to do the same. “What do you think happens after people die?”
Anise paused, as if taken aback by my statement. “Is this relevant?”
“It’s very relevant. I know it sounds random, but I promise I’m going somewhere with this,” I said.
“Well… the church of t...
2023-07-15 03:01:10 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 122: …And Plants
Author’s Note: Previous chapter error correction. It should NOT take 10 minutes to cross the patch of plants - I was doing some math based on average human walking speed, and realized that that was… quite a bit larger than what I was imagining. Description of plant patch has been changed to be much smaller - should be around a 10 second walk...
2023-07-14 06:19:36 +0000 UTC View PostWe spent the next three days traveling through the wastes, making sure to take shelter for a day after each day of traveling to make sure nobody got sick. We didn’t run into very many living creatures: whatever the black sun was doing, it seemed to have killed off a lot of the local wildlife.
Of course, we still ran into a few strange creatures during our travels, even if most of what w...
2023-07-13 05:29:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe two quickly made their way out of Ethan’s manor, before heading towards the healer’s shop where the unfortunate Mages were located. Ethan led the way, and Alice followed behind. There were also a few [Guards] with relatively high levels tagging along, keeping alert gazes as they scouted the area and tried to keep a wary eye on any signs of the Society of Starry Eyes. Alice felt a little...
2023-07-08 07:28:48 +0000 UTC View PostWhen we stepped back onto the surface, I couldn’t help but wince.
The first time we had set foot in the wastes, over a decade and a half ago, I had noticed how strange everything was. The pink grass, the smell of charcoal, the ring-shaped planet… All of those things had distracted me, causing me to focus on them as I tried to devour everything I was seeing for the first time.
Ho...
2023-07-08 03:53:04 +0000 UTC View Post“Are you sure you want to come with us?” I asked Anise, for the third time.
Honestly, I felt worried. Unlike Sallia and Felix, Anise wasn’t a part of the Market. In other words, after she died, she would return to the ocean of souls, where her soul would try to search for rebirth. In that time, her memories would likely be lost, and much of her sense of self would disappear. Death w...
2023-07-07 05:26:22 +0000 UTC View PostAfter I created my new and improved healing spell, time passed.
I spent about two and a half weeks healing everyone’s injuries, starting with Anise. After Anise’s face was healed, I divided my essence equally between Felix and Ella to heal their injuries, and then finally healed my own legs. The muscle healer was able to help reconstruct everyone’s deteriorated muscles much more qui...
2023-07-06 04:41:57 +0000 UTC View Post“Immortal Ethan, I would like to talk about my research,” said Alice, after stepping into the hallway and making sure there were no nearby [Servants]. “I feel that it will be extremely relevant in the coming days, which is why I am willing to talk about it. However, I would also like to keep it a secret – if the Society of Starry Eyes learns about my studies, I feel that they would stop...
2023-07-01 07:14:05 +0000 UTC View Post--------------------
Skill: Acquire [Basic] mastery of Ocean’s Duality duality magic
Achievement +500
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Since you have trained the concept of Ocean’s Duality magic to [Basic] Grade for the first time, upon your death you will have the option to purchase [The Cycle of the Ocean] as an ability, for the cost...
2023-06-30 04:14:05 +0000 UTC View Post